Guild Wars 2

I’m a noob, especially on my thief, and I haven’t played in a while. Seriously noob. I was wearing full Zho’s (I know) and had 2 pvt daggers. It works in pve for decent damage and survivability. But anyway, my set up was just bad. Also, I’m not skilled. But I’ve never been killed that fast on any other profession I’ve played.

So I jumped this guy, another thief, just to see what happened, win or lose, how it would go down. That’s how I learn. But the thing is, it happened too fast. It was over in about 5 seconds. He was behind a Dolyak when I jumped him, so I didn’t see whether he had a sword or dagger, but he did have a pistol. I heard that. I was dead and on the ground and he had about 80% health. Like I said, it took 5 seconds.

Any ideas what kind of traits and weapons that guy might have been running and what kind of gear would work well with a pistol + sword or dagger?

Is there a good site where I can get more in-depth info on current builds like that?

D/P 10/30/X/X/X, full zerk. It’s a pretty standard build that can take down anyone who doesn’t know how to deal with it with relative ease.

Pistol and a burst? That would be Dagger (most likely) or Sword main hand and Pistol offhand. Pistol/Pistol main is possibly but rare. You can run a power build on any weaponset, but Pistol/Dagger is happier when you mix in lots of Condition Damage, or go full Condition. If your weapon provides stealth it may be wise to trait deep into Shadow Arts, otherwise at least 15 Acrobatics. The rest in Critical Strikes, Trickery and/or Deadly Arts – each has it’s specific merits.

(edit: missed you, I need to type faster)

Skull.8253:

Any ideas what kind of traits and weapons that guy might have been running and what kind of gear would work well with a pistol + sword or dagger?

Might have been D/P, stacked up some might and gained fury via steal or furious retaliation, and just taken you down with auto attack + heartseeker. If you lost target for a second it would have been a back stab – an effective opening against.
Might have been P/D, in which case a few venoms and stealth attack would have had a bunch of conditions rip through your health ignoring your armour. With low health, you die to condition burst quickly.
Might have been S/P in which case you’d have been stunned and burst down with a lot of quick strikes (pistol whip).

Skull.8253:

Is there a good site where I can get more in-depth info on current builds like that?

I can’t tell you what they’d be using exactly, there are a lot of different builds for the different weapon combinations. These are the types of build you’ll encounter, but each one will likely be slightly different from the next. For example, one might have 30 tricks while another has 30 acrobatics.

• D/D: Back stab burst
• D/D: Bleeding
• D/P: Back stab burst possibly with high sustain
• P/P: Rare to see but there are builds based on using unload
• P/D: Condition burst, usually with venoms
• S/P: Usually focus on bursting down with pistol whip and evading with pistol whip
• S/D: Evade, boon theft, constant pressure, can kite
• SB: Usually used for a defensive weapon swap, but you can make a good condition build out of it as a main weapon.

For deeper explanations into specific builds, there are some guides listed here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Guide-to-Thief-Guides/first

Probably standard D/P. Starts off with black powder + heartseeker -> backstab -> autoattack -> rinse and repeat.

S/P actually isn’t too common in WvW. But a traited steal → pistol whip can do just as much off-guard.

more freebies to thieves.

what’s new?

Burnfall.9573:

more freebies to thieves.

what’s new?

Indeed, we don’t charge for information, it’s given freely.

Thanks for the information. And Impact, thanks for your great response. I will check out the links.

It could also easily have been S/P. he immediately pistol shipped you, which if you sit in the whole thing does more dmg than backstab, and evades for the whole animation. It also stuns for 1/2 second. So were you stunned? Otherwise i agree it was full zerk d/p

I don’t know Carpboy. I wasn’t expecting that kind of beatdown. It happened so fast. I do know that I had trouble targeting him and I never had a chance to get my panic button elite skill off. It seems like he stealthed out and wound up behind me at one point.

Probably the pistol was just a dagger and he just Steal → CnD → BS → HS → HS on you. If he gets some lucky crits and you dont evade / SS away, you’re down in less than 5s.